In the fall of 2015, the editors of this collection initiated an open call for papers for a symposium to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in May 2016. As symposium conveners and editors, our aim was to attract interdisciplinary papers that place investigations of sport, physical activity, and physical culture into deeper conversation with analyses of international development. While the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector â and related scholarly analyses â have been flourishing for more than 15 years, both receive little attention from development scholars.1 Given this state of affairs, this collection seeks to generate new dialogues and explore linkages for development and SDP researchers through considerations of sportâs potential to challenge and/or perpetuate key global issues and problems. This collection includes articles from six contributors to that symposium and two additional contributors, the majority of whom are located in academic fields that foreground the study of sport as an important and culturally complex physical practice.
These scholars argue that the enterprise of the SDP sector requires more critical engagement, suggesting that although sport remains marginal to international development scholars, it is increasingly recognised and promoted by nation-states, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), activists, international organisations, and corporations as a means to address issues of global concern.2 Taken together, the papers in this collection provide insights from diverse theoretical and empirical domains, including critical, feminist, post-colonial, and cultural studies perspectives. The authors use âsportâ in the broadest sense to cover many aspects of physical culture, including recreational community-based participation and competitive sport at the elite level. While a contested term, SDP has been characterised as the intentional âuse of sport and physical activity to advance reconciliation and intercultural communication in regions of conflict (âsport for peaceâ)â and the use of sport and physical activity to attain specific development objectives, some of which were first identified through the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (also described as âsport for developmentâ or SFD).3
Almost a decade ago, Levermore (2008) asked if sport was becoming the ânew engine of developmentâ.4 Kidd further observed that while development studies scholars have largely overlooked SDP, it âhas become a recognised strategy of social intervention in disadvantaged communities throughout the worldâ.5 Despite increased visibility, it is important to note that SDP practices are not a recent phenomenon. International organisations like the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) first began using sport to reach development-related objectives in the early 1920s.6 However, the United Nationsâ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000 â and now the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) of 2015 â have further served as anchors institutionalising and broadly expanding SDP initiatives. Today, the SDP sector is not necessarily cohesive â indeed, scholars continue to debate whether a unified SDP âmovementâ exists â particularly as a wide range of stakeholders fall under this umbrella.7 From international governmental and NGOs, to multinational corporations and other non-state actors, an assorted array of stakeholders have sought to mobilise sport for a diverse range of interventions including health outcomes, gender equity, the alleviation of poverty, education, community engagement, and other aspects of social welfare.
Initially, the SDP âmovementâ was presumed to be an effective way of contributing to peace building and social development. However, critical scholarship has challenged the âmessianic claimsâ that sport is a universally beneficial way to usher in âFirst Worldâ aid and development.8 An increasingly robust SDP research agenda has extended beyond monitoring and evaluation (M & E) of project outcomes and has examined the power relations and structural inequalities that underpin both sport and international development. Indeed, a growing body of literature examines the social and political implications of tying sport to development as well as the manner in which sport too frequently perpetuates and sustains contemporary neo-colonial aid relationships.9 In addition, a wealth of empirical literature and case studies outline the potential, pitfalls, and limits of SDP initiatives, and highlight the challenge of SDPâs disengagement with broader trends within international development.10 In response to these concerns, this collection aims to show how development research and SDP may benefit from more purposeful and novel engagements.
Some of the questions animating this collection are: What are the over-arching characteristics of sport for development in relation to the broader field of international development? What globalised governance structures and practices facilitate and enable how SDP programming operates? What frameworks for studying SDP adequately address neo-colonial development legacies? What are the promises and limits of critical pedagogy within SDP? What are the values and limitations of local grassroots development efforts centred on sport? How might SDP research and practice benefit from integrating post-colonial feminist participatory action research approaches? How do SDP practitioners respond to increased demands for M&E practices? The papers offered in this collection do not by any means exhaust these questions, but they do represent the important ways in which SDP needs constant re-examination in the context of geopolitical changes.
The first three essays in this collection are theoretical pieces that draw from broader development approaches to propose new ways of analysing SDP. First, David Black11 examines how scholars of both sport and international development need to better understand the logic of âtop downâ development approaches that prevail in sport for development and how changes can be made for more socially inclusive and sustainable SFD. Simon Darnell and Michael Dao12 offer a suggestive and generative signposting of how political and developmental theory might be engaged within the field of SDP. In particular, they explore Martha Nussbaumâs capabilities approach as a way to theorise sportâs potential contributions to the current policies and practices that fall under the SDP banner. In the US context, Mary McDonaldâs13 paper offers an analysis of the post-9/11 development agenda and the mobilisation of Title IX, the 1972 US legal mandate requiring equity within educational settings including sport. Specifically, her work critically explores the ideologies of security promoted globally through the US State Departmentâs âEmpowering Women and Girls Through Sportsâ programme.
The next series of articles focus on SDP fieldwork across many parts of the world, including Australasia, Columbia, Nicaragua, Canada, and the southern US. Turning once more to the US context, Kate Diedrick and Christopher Le Dantec14 interrogate the impact of sport mega-development on predominantly African-American neighbourhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. Their paper offers insight regarding how sport mega-development projects often reproduce historical and global patterns of poverty and disenfranchisement as well as possibilities for community-wide political engagement. Kathryn Henne15 draws from ethnographic work conducted at the United Nations and in Australasia and the Pacific to examine how SDP programming is created and negotiated by networks of different actors â both human and non-human â that contribute to the governance of SDP. Her article offers an analysis of the ways in which indictor culture, specifically the growing reliance on quantified measurement tools, implicates SDP networks. The focus on measurement tools also drives Megan Chawansky and Alison Carneyâs16 examination of what gets measured and counted in SDP monitoring and evaluation, and why. Their paper moves the argument about indicator culture into new territory by revealing the lack of discussion on pleasure that exists in research on and about girls in SfD.
Sarah Oxford and Ramon Spaaij17 draw on ethnographic research conducted in two marginalised neighbourhoods in two major cities in Columba. This paper examines how critical pedagogy transpires and how donor-NGO relations affect the experience of SDP practitioners and participants. The collection concludes with Lyndsay Hayhurstâs18 article, which sheds light on the use of visual research methods guided by a post-colonial-feminist participatory action research (PFPAR) approach. Hayhurst uses a range of participatory methodological platforms â including photovoice, photocollaging, and digital storytelling with urban Aboriginal women in Canada and rural Nicaraguan young women â to amplify important issues, while critically questioning and discussing the ways in which SDP research can benefit from integrating participatory feminist post-colonial approaches.
Collectively, these articles help to paint a picture about the complicated ways in which sport is represented and used within development agendas in spaces across the globe. More importantly, they build upon and extend existing scholarship in this area in an effort to anticipate, inspire, and shape the next phase of innovative research in, on, and about SDP.